As may be appreciated, a content management server is employed by an enterprise or organization to build, deploy, and maintain a content-rich web site such as that which may be accessible by way of the Internet or another network. Such a content management server streamlines the web publishing process, thereby reducing costly site maintenance and empowering the enterprise or organization to manage its own content. An example of such a content management server is provided by the MICROSOFT Content Management Server application, as developed and marketed by MICROSOFT Corporation of Redmond, Wash., USA.
Thus, a content management server is employed to deploy an Internet, intranet, or extranet web site, and provides tools necessary to build and deploy the core infrastructure of a web site, including site structure, presentation templates, site design, application integration, and security. In addition, once a site has been deployed, managers and content authors can use content management server tools to create, publish, and manage their own content.
Typically, a content management server provides content managers, authors, and the like with tools that enable such personnel to create and publish rich, personalized content directly to a web site. A role-based distributed publishing model is typically employed, where such model incorporates an approval workflow with multiple levels, automatic content scheduling and archiving, and content indexing. Developers can create centrally-managed page templates and publishing processes that ensure consistency across the site, thus ensuring adherence to organizational publishing standards and branding without diminishing the flexibility of the publishing environment.
In the prior art, to author and publish content to a web site by way of a content management server, a content author would employ a web-based authoring tool within an Internet browser, where the web-based authoring tool is a service provided by the content management server. Typically, such content author would design the content with the aid of a template as provided by the web-based authoring tool, and upon authoring the content would publish the content to the content management server with the aid of the web-based authoring tool. Thereafter, the published content at the content management server is approved by an editor, and then placed in an appropriate location in the web site by a moderator.
However, such a web-based authoring tool does not take advantage of the fact that a content author likely has available thereto one or more content-authoring applications of which such content author is much more familiar and comfortable with. That is, the content author likely has a word-processing application available thereto, a presentation application available thereto, a spreadsheet application available thereto, a relational database application available thereto, and/or the like, each of which is very powerful and highly functional, and each of which the content author is thoroughly familiar with. In contrast, the web-based authoring tool is not as familiar to the content author and is likely not as powerful or functional in terms of authoring capabilities as any of the aforementioned content-authoring applications. Nevertheless, the content author has heretofore been limited to using the web-based authoring tool to author content to be published to the content management server.
Moreover, for the content management server to provide such web-based authoring tool to a content author, the content author heretofore had to be in network connectivity with the content management server. That is, the content author could not author the content remotely from the content management server and then connect and publish thereto.
Accordingly, a need exists for a publishing interface between a content-authoring application and a content management server such that a content author can author content to be published to the content management server on the content-authoring application and then publish the authored content to the content management server. Moreover, a need exists for such a publishing interface that does not require the content author to be in network connectivity with the content management server while authoring the content.